Heat-Soaked, Heat-Tired…

Two in the afternoon. It’s 112 in the shade of the back porch. Running up the power bill by leaving the thermostat at the night-time temp: 78 degrees. I keep fading, coming back, fading. Feel OK for and hour or two, then feel like I need to go back to bed. Just finished eleven (count-’em, 11) sentences in the Ella’s Story chapter that needs to go online tomorrow. Have no idea where the thing is going.

What next? How about back to bed?

Why, you ask, do I feel so tired, other than that the fine enervating effect of prolonged 112-degree heat? Why, indeed:

• Up at 4:30 a.m.
• Read email, answer messages.
• Read news, grind teeth.
• Get dressed, more or less.
• Out the door with the dogs: 5:15 a.m.
• Walk dogs one mile
• Feed dogs
• Mix up large container of Roundup (yeah, I know, but if you want to come over and pull fire-hazard weeds out of the alley by hand, be my guest!)
• Unlock iron bars that span the back gate to discourage transients from using the gate alcove as a loo.
• Don heavy garden gloves.
• Drag wheelbarrow and dog pooper-scooper through back gates, up the alley, into front yard.
• Use the scooper to lift a very prickly piece of prickly-pear cactus off the ground and into the barrow.
• Lift the pot with the dead prickly-pear cactus off the ground and into the barrow, trying not to touch the plant.
• Roll these to the garbage can in the alley.
• Lift pot (very heavy, even though dessicated) into the shoulder-high trash can. Toss.
• Toss dead prickly-pear pad in after it.
• Peel ruined gloves off and throw them and the myriad stickers they’ve collected into the trash can.
• Drag wheelbarrow back into yard. Close and lock back gate.
• Pick up dog mounds; deposit in dog poop/junk mail container — another device to discourage transients, who will go through the trash looking for things with your name and address…especially credit-card offers.
• Carry dribble-bottle of Roundup into the front yard
• Drip Roundup on weeds on east side of house.
• Down the alley: Douse the idiot neighbor’s butt-high crop of fire-hazard weeds with Roundup.
• Drip Roundup on the few weeds that have broken through behind my house.
• Put away the Roundup gear.
• Lubricate the wheelbarrow, whose squealing probably woke up the idiot neighbors (one can only hope…)
• Put wheelbarrow back in its place.
• In bathroom, dig out tweezers. Pick (painful!) hair-thin prickly-pear stickers out of fingers and out of a toe (!! HOW???)
• Back outside: water potted plants.
• Turn sprinkler on bedding plants and rose on west side.
• Check pool chlorine.
• Jump in pool, swim around.
• Rinse incipient growth of mustard algae off steps.
• Wash self and hair in hose.
• Turn soaker hose on cat’s claw vines.
• Dry off.
• Comb out tangles and put up wet hair.
• Fix and consume coffee and breakfast.
• Put away dishes.
• Pick up dog dishes, too.
• Write to correspondents.
• Begin trying to write Ella, chapter 28.
• Daydream.
• Read news.
• Think how fricking TIRED I am.
• Worry that weight continues to fall off despite effort to end diet.
• Write to correspondents at some length.
• Write and publish a short Quora essay. Watch with amazement and amusement as a flurry of “likes” flashes up on the screen, forthwith.
• Consider, in awe, that 17,200 people have read one of those Quora essays!
• Make note in relevant Facebook discussion as to how you can use Quora to guide traffic to your website or author page.
• Think how fricking HUNGRY I am.
• Decide to fix slumgullion, using US-made pasta, which seems to be more fattening than expensive Italian pasta guaranteed made with European wheat. Ooohhkkkayyyy…
• Think how much I do not want to drive to Sprouts to buy one (1) onion.
• Realize I have a bunch of frozen mirepoix.
• Exhume this from the fridge.
• Start mirepoix sautéing. Throw in some frozen chopped spinach.
• Defrost hamburger.
• Set large pot of water to boil.
• Mince garlic, add tbat and a fistful of walnuts to mirepoix.
• Sauté hamburger.
• Start pasta boiling.
• Toss browned meat into mirepoix, adding dash of nutmeg, sprinkle of cinnamon. Simmer.
• Add half a box of leftover Pomí tomatoes to frying pan. Approve: an acceptable sauce, even absence a splash of red wine.
• Retrieve pasta; mix with sauce. Dump some on a plate; put the rest in a refrigerator container.
• Sprinkle generous amount of Parmesan over the chow on the plate.
• Eat.
• Feel a lot better: maybe I’m not dying of liver failure after all?
• Start writing.
• Procrastinate, racking up large numbers of game points.
• Read Facebook.
• Write.
• Think how fricking TIRED I am.
• Lift the dogs onto the bed.
• Climb on after them.
• Write this.

So it goes.